This Japan City Is Apple’s Next Research Hotbed

A spokesperson representing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday during a press conference in Tokyo that Apple plans to finish construction of a new development center in Japan’s second largest city Yokohama, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

The Chinese news service reported that the new facility should open in December. Japanese electronics manufacturer Panasonic previously occupied the site of Apple’s aapl new development center.

Tech blog Apple Insider reported in April on Apple’s plans to open the Yokohama center, citing a Japanese blog that said the space will contain several buildings as opposed to one large facility. Apple Insider reported that Apple would hire researchers in the “materials science, vehicles, and health industries.”

The news of the opening of Apple’s new facility comes during a visit from Apple CEO Tim Cook to Japan to meet with the prime minister, which Bloomberg News said was Cook’s first visit to Japan since become Apple’s top executive.

According to Cook’s Twitter page, the Apple CEO also visited Nintendo ntdoy video game producer Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of the popular Mario video game series in addition other admired video games.

In September during an Apple event in San Francisco, Cook invited Miyamoto on stage to demo a new Mario game for Apple mobile devices. The upcoming game, to be released in December, is noteworthy for being the first legally sanctioned Mario app to be available on iOS devices.

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“The magic of Mario is that anyone can pick up a game and everyone can start playing,” Miyamoto said at the time.

Japan Pledges $30 Billion for Africa Over Next Three Years

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told African leaders on Saturday that his country will commit $30 billion in public and private support for infrastructure development, education and healthcare expansion in the continent.

Resource-poor Japan has long been interested in tapping Africa’s vast natural resources, even more so since dependence on oil and natural gas imports jumped after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster shut almost all of Japan’s nuclear reactors.

Abe, in the Kenyan capital Nairobi to attend the sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD), said the package would be spread over three years from this year and include $10 billion for infrastructure projects, to be executed through cooperation with the African Development Bank.

“When combined with investment from the private sector, I expect that the total will amount to $30 billion. This is an investment that has faith in Africa’s future, an investment for Japan and Africa to grow together,” he told a gathering of more than 30 heads of state and government from across Africa.

The $30 billion announced on Saturday is in addition to $32 billion that Japan pledged to Africa over a five-year period at the last TICAD meeting in 2013. Abe said 67% of that had already been put to use in various projects.

“Today’s new pledges will enhance and further expand upon those launched three years ago. The motive is quality and enhancement,” he said.

Japan’s overall direct investment in Africa totalled $1.24 billion in 2015, down from about $1.5 billion a year earlier, according to the Japan External Trade Organization, which does not provide a breakdown of sectors.

Its presence in infrastructure projects ranges from roads, ports and airports to power plants.

In comparison, rival China made a single investment of $2 billion in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in the month of April 2015 alone.

A tranche of Japan’s new package will go towards various power projects to increase production capacity by 2,200 megawatts across the continent, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Money will also be spent on training 20,000 mathematics and science teachers throughout Africa, as well as 20,000 experts on how to handle infectious diseases.

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Chadian President and current African Union Chairman Idriss Deby, attending the summit, urged Tokyo also to support efforts to tackle a lack of security, including that arising from terrorism.

“At the recent African Union Summit, we did say how it was important to mobilize the international community to counter all these scourges,” he said.

“I urge all our partners, and in particular Japan, to contribute to the African Fund Against Terrorism that was set up and established by the Kigali summit,” Deby said, in reference to an AU meeting held in Rwanda in July.

Tokyo Elects Its First Ever Woman Governor

Former Defense Minister Yuriko Koike was elected Tokyo’s first woman governor Sunday, pledging to regain control of the capital’s 2020 Olympic spending.

“I will lead Tokyo politics in an unprecedented manner, a Tokyo you have never seen,” said Koike, who ran as an independent candidate after the ruling Liberal Democratic Party backed a rival, according to Agence France-Presse.

Running against 20 other candidates, Koike eclipsed her nearest rival by over 700,000 votes after two-thirds of the ballots were counted. The election took place after former governor Yoichi Masuzoe stepped down over reportedly embezzling public funds for personal expenses.

Overspending has plagued Tokyo’s preparations for the 2020 Olympics, which has possibly tripled the initial budget of $7.14 billion. Koike promised to immediately rein that in.

Eager Japanese rushed to their phones on Friday to start hunting as Pokemon GO, the hit Nintendo-backed smartphone game, finally launched in Japan, home of the colorful cartoon characters.

The game has been an unexpected, runaway success from Spain to Australia, doubling Nintendo’s value since the game’s launch in the United States earlier this month.

Japan, however, had been made to wait, as Niantic, the developers behind the game, and Nintendo sought to ensure servers would withstand the game’s popularity. Finally, after days of rumors, it launched on Friday.

“From today you can go out and find Pokemon to your heart’s content,” he said. “We hope the game enables users to see the world in a new, fulfilling way. Obey the rules and have fun.”

University students in Tokyo on their last day of classes before summer holidays did just that, jumping into the fray within moments of the launch, capturing monsters as a frenzy erupted between classes.

People playing Pokemon GO in Tokyo, Japan on July 22, 2016. (David Mareuil/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

“This game is just as I imagined it to be, it’s really fun,” said Toshinori Ishibashi, 18, who was seen playing the game near a Pokemon goods store in Tokyo Station.

The game was created by Nintendo nintendo, Niantic and Pokemon Co, part-owned by Nintendo. Both Nintendo and Pokemon Co have undisclosed stakes in Niantic.

As retailers and brands vie for a piece of a hit that takes players from place to place, fast food chain McDonald’s Japan mcd said its nearly 3,000 shops across Japan would serve as spots where Pokemon can be battled or “trained” in the game – within limits.

“Ultimately, McDonald’s is a restaurant,” said a company spokesman. “We will call on players not to become a bother to customers who are eating.”

The game has enthralled players and boosted investors’ view of Nintendo’s future, as they bet the group can cash in on a treasure chest of other lucrative cartoon characters, from Donkey Kong to Super Mario.

But the game has also prompted warnings, as players glued to their phones become prone to tripping over, crashing cars, getting mugged or wandering into dangerous places.

The Japanese government on Thursday became the latest to issue a safety warning. The country’s National Center for Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC) told users of the mobile game not to use their real names and warned them about the risks of heat stroke in the muggy Japanese summer.

A number of other Asian nations still await the game, including China, the world’s biggest smartphone and online gaming market. Niantic Chief Executive John Hanke has said it would be technically possible to launch there, but noted a host of complex rules and restrictions.

Nintendo shares, which have seen a meteoric rise in recent days, climbed in Tokyo trading on Friday but pared gains to close up under 1%. McDonald’s Japan ended up 4.2%.

Here’s Why Nintendo Shares Are Soaring

Shares in Japan’s Nintendo Co surged on Friday as consumers flocked to try out its new Pokemon GO smartphone game, raising hopes that the company’s long-awaited shift into mobile gaming will pay off.

Seeking to protect its console business, the Japanese group had for many years resisted introducing mobile games with its best-known characters such as Super Mario Bros and Pokemon, finally yielding to investor calls last year when it announced a tie-up with mobile specialst DeNA Co.

Its first mobile title, Miitomo, was only launched in March after some delay and was also a social networking-style application, leaving investors disappointed and impatient.

But Wednesday’s launch of Pokemon GO in the United States has seen the title shoot up to become the No. 1 free app in Apple’s aapl U.S. iTunes store. It was also launched in Australia and New Zealand this week and is expected to be rolled out in Japan soon.

Many reviewers said they were keen on the game although they hoped that technical glitches would soon be resolved. Shares in Nintendo jumped 10% to their highest level in more than two months with the stock the most heavily traded by value on Tokyo’s main board and giving the firm a market value of about $23 billion.

The game, in which players search out and capture Pokemon characters and do battle with other Pokemon, is free, but it also offers in-app purchases for power-ups and extra items.

“It has more (monetisation) than we expected; as users build their Pokémon inventory, spending money becomes needed to store, train, hatch and battle,” Macquarie Securities said in a note to clients, adding that purchases so far in Australia were not being driven by big spenders but by a large number of users.

The company has promised four more smartphone games in the financial year to end-March and has said it expects mobile gaming to help boost annual operating profit by a third to 45 billion yen ($450 million).

Nintendo ntdoy also plans to release its next console globally in March 2017.

“The company has huge intangible assets like characters but it hasn’t been trying to use them seriously. But the success of its Pokemon GO shows the company has got great content,” said a fund manager at a UK asset management firm in Tokyo.

A Hedgehog Cafe Is Opening in Tokyo

Back in 2014, Japan spearheaded what would become a global trend—cat cafes, a place for patrons to drink coffee in the company of cats. Now, cat cafes are popping up across the United States from New York to Oakland. Japan, however, has moved on.

The Guardianreports that Tokyo is now getting its very own hedgehog cafe, where customers can pony up 1,000 yen ($9) on weekdays and 1,300 yen ($12) on holidays to carefully play and cuddle with the prickly yet adorable animals.

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The cafe is called “Harry”—a play on the Japanese word for needle–and is fully stocked with 20 to 30 different breeds of hedgehogs for all your cuddling needs.

“We wanted to show people the charm of hedgehogs, which give the impression of being hard to handle. We wanted to get rid of that image by letting people touch them,” cafe worker Mizuki Murata told The Guardian. The cafe is already a hit, with an employee telling NBC News that there has been a line out the door since the cafe opened.

“Terrorist attacks using drones carrying explosives are a possibility,” a senior member of the police department’s Security Bureau said in an interview with the publication. “We hope to defend the nation’s functions with the worst-case scenario in mind.”

Just one net-wielding drone will be used at first around the city to catch potentially predatory unmanned aerial devices, according to The Asahi Shimbun. It will patrol the Imperial Palace and the prime minister’s office.

On December 10, the country’s aviation law added airspace restrictions since drone use by the public has become more prevalent.

Meet Mercedes-Benz’s Vision Tokyo, a self-driving car for the megacity

The latest concept car developed by Mercedes-Benz was built to shuttle Generation Z around megacities in style—and anticipate their future needs.

The so-called Vision Tokyo, which was unveiled today at the Tokyo Auto Show, is a self-driving vehicle that looks like a cross between a spaceship and a minivan. It has lounge-like seating that can hold up to five people, is powered by a hybrid fuel cell system, and projects holographic 3D imagery of apps, maps and other displays to entertain its passengers. There’s also a jump seat that can swivel the passenger around to a driving position if the need arises.

The entire car is designed with urban Generation Zers—people born after 1995—in mind. The car’s designers see a future where a vehicle is no longer a way to get from point A to point B, but is instead a “digital, automobile companion”—a respite that shields its passengers from the mayhem of megacity living.

The concept car uses deep machine learning and a predictive engine, so that with every trip it becomes more familiar with its occupants, as well as their likes and preferences, according to Mercedes-Benz owner Daimler. Yes, it is as creepy (and cool) as it sounds.

Like most concept vehicles, this is a one-off product. Meaning, it’s not headed to the production line. However, concept cars often inform and inspire industrial designers working on future generations of vehicles. Elements of Vision Tokyo—including the autonomous, fuel cell tech or LED lighting—could show up in future a Mercedes-Benz model.

Most automakers are already working to develop self-driving tech that will turn drivers into passengers. Audi, Daimler, Ford F, Tesla F, General Motors GM, Volvo, and Nissan, are all developing autonomous driving features. Additionally, Google GOOG, Delphi Automotive DLPH, and Bosch are also working on their own self-driving tech.

In recent years several companies have accelerated their self-driving efforts. A number of U.S. companies—including Audi, Bosch, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz unit, Delphi Automotive, Google, and Nissan—have permits through a California DMV program for testing self-driving cars. Google has expanded its testing of autonomous vehicles into Austin, and in June introduced a self-driving car that it designed itself. That car has no pedals or steering wheel, but does contain its own driving sensors and software. Google hopes to commercialize the technology by 2020.

Meanwhile, GM announced plans in October to add a fleet of 2017 Chevrolet Volts designed to drive autonomously within its renovated Warren Technical Center campus in Michigan. And Volvo unveiled an interface that will allow drivers to activate and deactivate the autonomous mode through specially-designed paddles on its steering wheel. The interface, called IntelliSafe Auto Pilot, will be available in 2017 for the first time on 100 XC90 model cars that Volvo will make available for its Drive Me project in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Mercedes’ Vision Tokyo car follows the Mercedes-Benz F 015 Luxury in Motion—a futuristic, self-driving car unveiled at the International Consumer Electronics Show last January. In many ways, the F 015 is similar to the company’s latest concept car. It also featured a mobile living room, which was designed to hold up to four people, and decked out with lots of luxury details, including nappa leather seats, blue LED lighting, and aluminum and glass surfaces.

Here are some other cool features found in the Vision Tokyo:

The side windows are screen-printed to match the color of the vehicle, which allows passengers to see out without the rest of the world looking in.

360-degree camera, which is needed in any autonomous vehicle, is on the fin of the vehicle’s roof.

The windshield is a continuous piece of glass paneling, similar to the glazed cockpit of a powerboat, according to Daimler.

Behind the passengers, who sit on an oval-shaped couch, are large wraparound LED screens.

Apps, maps, and displays projected from the entertainment system are shown as 3D holograms

Its fuel cell-powered electric drive system combines on-board electricity with a high-voltage battery.

It’s 11 AM in Tokyo, what have you done so far today? What’s a typical day like for you during the pop-up?

René Redzepi: I wake up in the morning with my kids; I have three daughters. They’re seven months old, three years old and six years old. We have breakfast, then I go to work. On Sunday mornings, when the restaurant is closed before I go back and do office work, I go to Switch Coffee, which has the best coffee in Tokyo if you ask me. The roast is light, very fruity. There’s like six varieties of beans to choose from. It’s one of these things where it’s a singular Japanese man standing there everyday. It’s his shop and he takes pride in doing it the best he can everyday.

That’s such a Japanese thing, taking one thing and working at it until it’s perfect.

Well it’s crazy and so unlike what we do. That’s why it boggles our mind coming here. In the West it’s about growth: how can you leverage this, how many outlets can you potentially do? That’s what any investor will ask you. Nobody will ever ask you: how well will you do, how well will your quality be? That’s why it’s so inspiring to see these places in Japan where people are just dedicated to one single thing. The other day, one of the guys went to a place called JBS Bar. It’s a place where there are 50,000 records on vinyl: jazz blues funk. The first thing you do, you go to the old man who owns the shop, a 60-year-old man who’s been collecting records all his life. You order your vinyl, he finds the vinyl and then he put it on, then afterwards, once the music is playing in this little shop, you order your drink. I mean, how amazing is that? To sit there with your whiskey and listen to your favorite vinyl! But things like this just don’t exist anymore because there’s no space for it.

Of all the places you could have taken Noma, why Japan?

I was traveling in Japan many years ago and was so blown away and wanting to come back and learn more. As I’m trying to figure out a way to do this, I don’t have the time or the possibility to be an intern again, to be a stagier as we call it in kitchen language, because of my responsibilities at the restaurant. I have children. And then from that moment on I started thinking, why don’t we go all of us? What if we all go and consider this as being stagiers from a restaurant point of view?

So you moved your whole family to Tokyo? And the Noma staff as well?

Everyone is here from the dishwasher to the cleaner to my head chef. A lot of guys brought their children; we have two kids in school here. It’s just a crazy, mind-boggling thing. It’s so expensive, so crazy, so time-consuming to organize the moving of 77 people in total for three months to a different part of the world. You’re not just moving a group of young people; you’re moving lives, you’re moving husbands and wives and children. You need to find out who is the doctor, where do they wash their clothes? You need think of the whole idea for the restaurant as if you were opening for good. You have to do everything from plate-ware to furniture to a design budget to traveling around Japan like we did—we’ve been here seven times in the past year for ingredients, to get familiar with food culture, to see the landscape. All that work gets mixed together and at the end there’s a menu and a dining experience that hopefully tells the diner something about Japan through the lens of our aesthetics.

When did you start coming to Japan to do research for the pop-up?

We started coming to Japan in December 2013. We’ve been lucky enough to have All Nippon Airways as a partner, enabling us to fly throughout Japan. The kitchen has been here seven times, but we’ve also had our general manager and accountant come here. We’ve had some of our waiters and sommelier here. So in total we’ve been here eleven times. This project is like a dream for us. It would not have been possible without the support from ANA.

What was your favorite part of the country you visited?

The northern part of Japan is my favorite. The forestry is pristine. It’s more of a nature experience, which I really enjoy. Maybe because it felt more like home, to tell the truth, even though it’s a different landscape. The quality of ingredients is immaculate, and the quality of the cooking is excellent. And people there are bit more loose than in more traditional towns like Kyoto and Tokyo. But I also love those cities, too. It’s impossible not to fall in love with Tokyo after being here two-and-a-half months.

The ethos at Noma is working with what the local landscape gives you. How did you approach foraging in a foreign environment?

The first thing we did was contact one of our friends [Masuhiro Yamamoto], who is the most respected [food] journalist in Japan. We asked him for a chef that would help us and be part of team and we got that through a chef called [Shinobu] Namae. He’s the chef at a restaurant called L’Effervescence, which is a four-year-old restaurant that just got its second Michelin star. He basically ripped half his time out of his schedule because he wanted so bad for [Noma Tokyo] to happen and wanted to help us. We started liaising with him, and from him and [Yamamoto] we started getting into contact with purveyors, foragers, other chefs that could help us find quality meats, where to find special berries, how to do you find foragers in northern part of Japan, what do we look for in the southern part? They were also the ones who gave us these in-depth authentic Japanese food culture experiences by having us go to temples for temple meals, having us try numerous tea ceremony experiences and getting us familiar with all those ideas about the importance of ceremony in the Japanese meal. Those two, they spent so much time on us, it’s unbelievable. If it wasn’t for them we couldn’t have done it.

What ingredient were you most excited to find and work with in Japan?

Oh man, I can’t tell you only one, because there’s too much to choose from. Soy milk here blew my mind; I love tofu, I’ve eaten it back in Europe so many times but didn’t know it existed in this quality. The citrus here is just mind-blowing, twelve to 15 varieties. The types of wild food they have here is crazy—and [the Japanese] are so used to eating them, they just eat them all the time so it’s easy for you to obtain. It’s not like back home where we have to create all our own supply chains. Here there are people on the mountains already harvesting weird roots and strange berries as an everyday thing.

After dinner service, where do you and the staff like to hang out to decompress?

There’s a place walking distance, five minutes from here called Devil’s Ramen, and that’s for sure a favorite amongst the staff. It happens to be also, we found out later by accident, that it’s a super famous place here in town. Lucky Peach just put out their [list of] five places to eat ramen in Tokyo and this is one of them. To tell you the truth, though, I haven’t been there myself because the kitchen team finishes 45 minutes to an hour before me. I have to stay until the last guest is gone. It’s a special moment for the guests. They waited, and I feel responsible to say goodbye to them. There are some weeks where I don’t leave the hotel for seven or eight days in a row. I’ve been working since the 27th of December with one day off. It’s pretty wild.

Culinarily, is there anything happening in Japan right now that you think we’ll see in the West soon?

I hope that we will explore much more of Japanese food culture. In America you’re much more advanced: you have good ramen, decent sushi, much better than most places in Europe. You also have a few kaiseki houses and so on, but generally what people consider Japanese food is still more or less sushi, right? Here, even the most vile 24-hour sushi place near Tsukiji market is three times better than anything we have in Denmark. I seriously mean that. There are almost no Japanese people in Denmark, and the sushi restaurants we have, they’re done by business people that hire college students.

The Tokyo pop-up goes until Valentine’s Day. What souvenir are you stuffing your suitcase full of when you leave?

Lots of ideas. That’s the only thing we will bring home. Which is much more valuable than bringing home two or three ingredients. To be inspired, to have new thinking, that’s so much more valuable, and I really think it’s going to change or whole approach to cooking because it’s humbling being here. You spend time here and you realize back home, more or less the value we put to food is very limited, and the moments through the year where we have articulated value toward what we eat on specific days is limited to Christmas and Thanksgiving, stuff like that. Whereas here it seems every single food item, whether it’s a lotus root or a strange mountain yam, has some sort of identity or meaning to the people about why you’re eating it at that specific moment. To put that much value to what you eat… it makes us look like insects in comparison to this food culture.

Frankly it also makes cooking easier by having such a beautiful meaning toward the simplest of ingredients. It rattles your whole creative process. One of the main moments of this is the idea of the green tea ceremony, which is essentially just a cup of tea when you think about it. But from the idea of a cup of tea, a monk wanted to codify the whole process and give meaning to one of the most average and everyday actions, which is to lift a cup with hot broth in and drink it. And from that sprouts a whole way of organizing room. And from that sprouts a whole way of organizing meal. Which then sprouts into the kaiseki meal, which has then arguably influenced the whole tasting menu of the West. But it starts with a cup of tea. So I find that immensely inspiring and very humbling. If you’re able to think and process a lot these everyday, seemingly unimportant moments in a new way, I think you can be inspired for decades.

The Noma Tokyo pop-up runs through Valentine’s Day weekend. The waiting list has 60,000 names.